Renowned producer and founder of Sire Records, Seymour Stein, who essentially discovered Madonna and marked the careers of other important musicians, has died at the age of 80.

Stein, who helped found the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Foundation and was himself inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2005, died of cancer in Los Angeles, according to a statement from his family.

Born in 1942, Stein was originally from New York and worked summers as a teenager for King Records in Cincinnati, James Brown’s label, and by the mid-1960s co-founded Sire Productions, which would soon become Sire Records.

Fascinated by the Billboard music charts since childhood, he was known for his deep knowledge and understanding of music and proved to be an astute judge of talent during the New Wave era of the 1970s, a term he helped define. records contracts with Talking Heads, Ramones and Pretenders.

“His musical tastes are always a few years higher than anyone else’s,” the Talking Heads manager told the Rock Hall of Fame during his induction.

Meeting with Madonna

His most profitable break came in the early 1980s when he heard a demo tape of an obscure New York City club scene singer and dancer, Madonna.

“I liked her voice, I liked the feel, and I liked the name. I loved them all and played them again,” he wrote in his memoir The Siren’s Song, published in 2018, the same year he retired. Stein was in the hospital with a heart infection when he first heard about Madonna, but he wanted to meet her so much that he asked to be brought to his room.

“She was dressed in cheap punk clothes, the kind of club boys who looked absurdly out of place and out of place in the cardiology department,” he wrote. “She wasn’t even interested in listening to me explain how much I enjoyed her demonstration. “What you need to do now,” he said, “is sign a record deal with me.”

Sire artists also included Ice T, The Smiths, Depeche Mode, The Replacements and Echo and the Bunnymen, as well as the more experienced Lou Reed and Brian Wilson, who recorded with Sire later in their careers.

Source: Associated Press.